...our administration believed that, one, it was important for people to know the facts as we see them. - George W. Bush
And there, in a nutshell, is the presidency of George W. Bush. There are facts, and then there are the facts.
Holding his first press conference in seven weeks, Bush took the podium to "scold" Congress, apparently for not seeing facts as he does. But the press corps chose to focus on the facts in the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that says that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago. Now, most people think that this undercuts the administration's argument that Iran poses an imminent peril to the world and that ignoring the threat could lead to World War III. Au contraire, says Mr. Bush:
Look, Iran was dangerous. Iran is dangerous. And Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.
After months of warnings that Iran is another mushroom cloud just waiting to happen, it turns out that:
...what is certain is that if Iran ever had the knowledge to develop a nuclear weapon and they passed that knowledge on to a covert program, which at one time in their history has existed, the world would be more dangerous.
The War on Knowledge has begun.
Of course the question people are now asking is, when did George Bush become aware of the contents of this NIE? According to Bush:
...I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was Mike McConnell came in and said, we have some new information. He didn't tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze...And it wasn't until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public.
So, last August, someone, maybe his director of national intelligence, maybe someone emptying the trash, mentioned some new information about the number one threat to the world, but they didn't tell him what it was. Hard to believe, isn't it? One of the reporters seemed equally skeptical:
Mr. President, thank you. Just to follow, I understand what you're saying about when you were informed about the NIE. Are you saying at no point while the rhetoric was escalating, as "World War III" was making it into conversation, at no point nobody from your intelligence team or your administration was saying, maybe you want to back it down a little bit?
THE PRESIDENT: No, nobody ever told me that.
Let's see what National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley had to say yesterday:
One, when the President was told that we had some additional information, he was basically told: stand down; needs to be evaluated; we'll come to you and tell you what we think it means. So this was basically -- as we said, this is information that came in the last few months, and the intelligence community spent a lot time to get on top of it.
But no, nobody ever told him that. Just another example of the facts as George Bush sees them.